Pardons and Presidential Proximity

My people are all honorable - all of them are. My house is always clean, what are you talking about? - Harry Truman

Margaret Truman once called Boston native Matthew J. Connelly a “shrewd, witty Irishman.” Connelly, who was also often described as “tall and handsome,” graduated from Fordham College and worked as a runner in the New York Stock Exchange and for Western Union.

Connelly's big break came when he landed a job with a Senate committee investigating campaign finances and he met Missouri Senator Harry Truman. In 1941, Connelly became the Chief Investigator for the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program. The Committee, proposed by Senator Truman on February 10, was constructed to investigate the awarding of defense contracts. It became popularly known as the Truman Committee. When Truman campaigned for the presidency out of the back of a combination sleeper and dining car, Connelly was right there, snoring and chowing with the future president. When Truman pulled off his stunning election victory, Connelly was the man who called him at 4:30 in the morning to let him know the celebration was beginning in Kansas City.

Truman appointed Connelly as his personal appointments secretary and Connelly’s father, a school janitor, must have swelled with pride. Connelly vacationed with the President and assisted him in the writing of speeches. When the President held staff meetings, Connelly was usually the first person called on to speak. In the period when Truman was contemplating the use of the atomic bomb, he penned a memo describing Connelly as an “honest” and “fair” man who “raises up the chips” and shows “the bugs.”

But a federal grand jury indicted Connelly for conspiracy to defraud the government in a 1951 tax evasion case. The case involved Irving Sachs, a shoe manufacturer in St. Louis. Connelly was also charged with perjury, bribery and accepting clothing and discounted stocks as “gifts.” As the investigation developed, Connelly informed the President. Truman sympathized, but remarked, “Well, you know, and I know, they’re not after you. They’re after me.”

In 1956, Connelly found himself a co-defendant with T. Lamar Caudle (head of the tax division of the Justice Department) and Harry J. Schwimmer (Sachs’ attorney). Schwimmer died of a heart attack on May 23 and his absence aggravated the ambiguous nature of evidence against Connelly. But, on June 14, the jury returned a verdict of guilty.

Connelly and Caudle immediately filed motions for acquittal or mistrial and Judge Rubey H. Hulen (an F.D.R. appointee) took the motions under consideration. But, before the decisions were announced, Hulen committed suicide. Judge Gunner H. Nordbye (a Hoover appintee) stepped in and denied the motions. Connelly was sentenced to two years in prison.

Truman called the verdict “a travesty” that would be “straightened out eventually" and Connelly began his appeal. David McCullough’s 1992 biography notes the former president was “convinced of Connelly’s innocence” and that Connelly was “the victim of a Republican vendetta.” Truman assisted in efforts to raise money for legal expenses by speaking at a one hundred dollar a plate fund raising dinner. The former president accused the Eisenhower administration of “unprecedented persecution” of his staff. But the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the case further and Connelly began serving his sentence on May 4, 1960. The two-year sentence of Mathew J. Connelly ended after only six months.

In March of 1961, former president Truman wrote to Attorney General Robert Kennedy and urged the granting of a presidential pardon. The letter called Judge Nordbye a “violent partisan” and, again, accused “the Republican Administration” of trying to “cast a shadow” over his own administration. Kennedy sent a reply that stated that the case was under consideration.

Truman sent a second letter to the Attorney General the following May. This time Truman claimed Hulen’s suicide was the direct result of the fact that “he knew he had not handled the cases in the interest of justice.” In fact, Hulen was already being treated for severe depression long before the trial began. Truman flatly asserted that the jury was “fixed,” the trial was “unjust,” and the Court of Appeals sent “an old Republican Judge from Minnesota” to review the case. Truman said the Judge “did not even read the record” before refusing another trial. Kennedy again answered that the case would be given careful consideration.

A third letter, composed early in 1962, was formed more along the lines of a “demand” as opposed to a “request.” Truman admitted that he had not talked with the Attorney General’s brother about Connelly, but Truman announced that he did not “intend to” either. In a tone that may have appeared almost threatening, Truman asserted that he did not “enjoy mistreatment and injustice” to one of his “best employees.” Connelly had been “abused” and Truman repeated the request in his original letters: “I want him pardoned.” The hand written missive ended with:

So don’t smile at me any more unless you want to do justice to Matt Connelly,which is the right thing – a full pardon.

A few months later Truman wrote to Connelly:

It looks as if that damned Irish Atty. Gen. may come across. He had a letter from me not long ago he’ll never forget. I don’t like him!”

The pardon finally came in November. Truman wrote a letter of thanks to the President for his pardon of the “unjust conviction.”